Social Credit Views

     In this second article, I will continue to examine some of the structural problems with conventional democratic political systems that Douglas had identified in the course of his writings, especially in the writings of his latter years. Beyond the particular defects in the voting system which were discussed in the previous month’s article, there are also problems with the party system and with how the voting and party systems interact with each other. Since there is quite a bit of information to cover, I beg the reader’s indulgence if the following is reminiscent of a lawyer’s seriatim brief.

Social Credit political theory readily grants what lies, perhaps, at the root of the democratic urge and which accounts, in large measure, for the popular appeal of ‘democracy’: firstly, that governments should serve the common good of the people and secondly, if governments don’t serve the common good of the people in an effective, efficient, and fair manner, the people who are affected should have the ability to sanction the government so that the quality of government might immediately improve. 

     At the same time, Douglas was highly critical of the conventional ‘democracies’ that have come to characterize the Liberal West, often describing them as ‘ineffective’. Not only did they fail to serve the common good to the extent that this was physically possible and desirable, they also failed to provide the people with an effective vehicle for remedying this sorry state of affairs. To make matters worse, it was not uncommon for ‘democratic’ governments to impose policies on the population which were contrary to the general will of the population. That is to say, we have been regularly treated to the spectacle of ‘democratic’ governments, so-called, introducing policies that are ‘anti-democratic’ in the deepest and truest sense of that word.

“It is a legitimate corollary of the highest conception of the human individual that to the greatest extent possible, the will of individuals shall prevail over their own affairs.”[1]

[1] C.H. Douglas, The Brief for the Prosecution (Liverpool: K.R.P. Publications Ltd., 1945), 72.

Conventional schemes for financing a Universal Basic Income tend to take the existing financial system as a given and to assume that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. But what if that system is, in fact, deeply flawed? What if it does not operate in full service to the public good, in full service to the common good? What if, through the type of monetary reform known as Social Credit, the provision of an unconditional and basic level of income for every citizen could be secured without taxes and without increasing the public debt?

Freedom is undoubtedly a very great good. It is indeed one of the key objectives and one of the main fruits of any successful social order. But the greatest problem in saying, within the context of association, that one is ‘in favour of personal freedom’ is that ‘freedom’ has come to mean so many different things to so many different people and the various definitions are by no means compatible.

“… Social Credit policy is traditional Tory-ism or genuine conservatism expressed in terms applying to industrial capitalism. In a world in which liberal, socialist, and other “left-ist” policies are dominant, Social Credit, as an expression of genuine conservatism appears revolutionary in nature – as indeed it is. A free society rooted in the Christian ethic, which is the goal of traditional conservatism, can be achieved only by bringing to birth a new civilization involving a fundamentally changed viewpoint of human relationships with the nation.”[1]

     As today is Remembrance Day, I thought it would be appropriate for us to consider one of the implications of Social Credit theory with respect to war:

"(...) the financial system (...) is, beyond all doubt, the main cause of international friction. Since, as we have seen, no nation can buy its own production, it is inevitable that there will be a struggle for markets in which to get rid of the surplus. The translation of this commercial struggle in a military context is simply a matter of time and opportunity. "[1]

     Jordan Peterson, the now famous Psychology Professor from the University of Toronto, has sometimes identified himself as a Classical Liberal. With his rise as an internet phenomenon, the social philosophy of Classical Liberalism and the political/economic systems inspired by it appear to be receiving a fresh impetus (or is it merely a final breath of air?) as the modern society in which we live, a society originally based on the principles of Classical Liberalism, sees itself falling deeper and deeper into a post-modern Marxist tyranny, both economic and cultural.

"A hair divides what is false and true." - Omar Khayyam

     One of Jordan Peterson’s central ideas is the notion that human beings, like lobsters, are naturally disposed to arrange themselves socially in ‘dominance hierarchies’. The fundamental claim is that, based on ‘competence’, human beings, and men in particular, compete with each other to determine who will get the greatest rewards, material and otherwise, that a society has to offer, including the ‘right’ to mate and reproduce.[1] Peterson appears to be keen to emphasize the naturalness and indeed the biological and evolutionary rootedness of this behavior because he thinks that it can serve as an unanswerable argument against the Cultural Marxists who despise the very idea of hierarchy and who would wish to see their idol of a totalitarianizing ‘equality’ ruling everywhere.